Forwarded from the documentary-editing list-serv, SEDIT-L:
The following tribute to Claude-Anne Lopez was prepared by Ellen Cohn of the
Papers of Benjamin Franklin. I forward it to you with my personal
appreciation and deepest sympathies to all who knew and worked with Claude.
Martha King
SEDIT-L list manager
*******
I am sorry to inform the editorial community that Claude-Anne Lopez, the
premier historian of Benjamin Franklin's private life and a long time editor of
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, died at her home in New Haven on December 28,
2012, at the age of 92. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Some
of you will remember Claude's lively talks to the ADE, and I, who worked
closely with her for more than twenty years, will never forget her brilliance
as an editor and her ability to turn even the most mundane tasks - be it
tandem-proofreading or typing document summaries - into a source of tremendous
fun. Claude had a rare combination of skills that allowed her to both focus on
minutiae and synthesize huge amounts of disparate material. She had a
journalist's nose for the "story" and a novelist's gift for language. Her
ability to penetrate the meaning of a document was unsurpassed. The only part
of editing that she disliked was filling in bibliographic citations, which she
slyly managed to avoid for most of her career.
A native French speaker who remained proud of her Belgian origins (and who
never renounced her Belgian citizenship), Claude was a war refugee who met her
future husband, Italian-born Robert Sabatino Lopez, while they were both
working for the Office of War Information in New York. In the early 1950s she
withdrew from a doctoral program in classics at Columbia to move to New Haven
with Robert, where he would have a distinguished career in the Yale History
Department. Forbidden by Yale's nepotism rules from holding a position at the
university, Claude was quietly hired by Professor Leonard Labaree, the first
editor of the Franklin Papers, to transcribe the thousands of French documents
that the Franklin team was acquiring during their initial search for material.
Though she was encouraged to do nothing but transcribe, Claude became
fascinated by this chaotic mass of material documenting one of the richest
periods in Franklin's life. Much of it was undated and many of the letters
were unsigned. Claude took notes, she kept lists, she made piles, she
assembled shoeboxes full of cards, she kept files of handwriting samples, and
above all, she read every single letter carefully, paying attention to tone as
well as content. She dated and identified countless numbers of documents.
During summer research trips in Europe with her husband, she tracked down
Franklin manuscripts in archives and in private hands. Though she would piece
together hugely important stories about Franklin's diplomatic and official
duties, she was primarily drawn to the personal letters, particularly those to
and from women. Lamenting the difficulty of reconstructing Franklin's
correspondence with the beautiful and talented Mme Brillon, who dated her
letters by only the "day of the week and the state of her soul," Claude charted
the contours of their relationship, setting it into the context of Franklin's
entire social circle in Paris, which was populated with witty intellectuals,
amusing abbés, sophisticated hostesses, and a variety of charming noblemen and
women who delighted in the American's every word. Bringing to this material
her own characteristic charm and flair, Claude wrote the first of her books,
Mon Cher Papa: Franklin and the Ladies of Paris (Yale University Press, 1966).
When William B. Willcox succeeded Labaree as Editor-in-Chief of the Franklin
Papers in 1972, he immediately put Claude's name on the title page as Assistant
Editor, crediting her for the first time as a member of the staff. She remained
an editor of the Franklin Papers until her official retirement in 1987,
following a year as Editor-in-Chief during which she presided over the
publication of volume 27. She continued to work for the project part-time for
several years thereafter. Long after she stopped coming into the office,
claiming to be "sick of writing footnotes," she served as a consultant. Her
research notes remain invaluable to the current editors, who also treasure the
one-phrase summaries of letters from unknown correspondents that she penciled
on the outside of document folders: "beggar," "crackpot," "cryptic plan from
cracked (military) brain." Far from deriding these hapless unknowns, however,
she delighted in summarizing their letters for our volumes in ways that
conveyed their eccentricities and humanity.
After she had focused on Franklin's relationships with women, Claude became
fascinated by his relationships with members of his own family, which she found
deeply revealing of his character in ways that had eluded previous scholars.
In collaboration with Eugenia Herbert, she published _The Private Franklin: the
Man and his Family_ (Norton, 1975). This ground-breaking work received
numerous prizes and is still cited for its chapter on Franklin and slavery as
well as its insights into Franklin's family life.
Despite these successes, Claude was unable to find a publisher for her
biography of Franklin's grandson William Temple Franklin, for which she had
conducted extensive research in archives in France and England as well as
America. In her retirement, she began transforming some of this material into
a fictional account of the Revolution intended for young adults. It was
published serially on the web as William Temple Franklin's Diary, where it
gained a substantial following. It can be accessed at
www.ushistory.org/franklin/temple.
Her other publications include _A Good House Contrived to My Own Mind_
(National Park Service Handbook Series, 1981), _Le Sceptre et la foudre:
Franklin en France_ (Mercure de France, 1990), and _My Life with Benjamin
Franklin_ (Yale University Press, 2000), in addition to numerous articles,
encyclopedia entries, and the notes for an edition of _Franklin's Bagatelles_
(Eakins Press, 1967).
Claude's abilities as a speaker were legendary, and she was highly sought after
as a lecturer and a "talking head" for television documentaries. She was
equally engaging in English, French and Italian. She won fellowships from the
Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, was knighted by the king of Belgium,
received the Hamar Award of the Society of American Archivists, and was honored
numerous times by the Friends of Franklin, an organization she helped found.
Extraordinarily generous with her knowledge, she assisted and collaborated with
scholars throughout Europe and the United States.
A memorial service is being planned for later this spring. Details will be
forthcoming. For more information on her life, see the website mounted by her
family: www.claudeannelopez.com.
Ellen Cohn
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin